A French art expert Thursday unveiled evidence he says proves that a silver statuette of a “wounded woman” is an unknown work by Auguste Rodin, depicting his lover and disciple Camille Claudel.

The unsigned statue, 22.5 centimeters (nine inches) tall, depicts a female figure, standing but stooped as if in pain, with a draped fabric over one arm and clenched between her thighs.

“All the clues point to Rodin,” Gilles Perrault, a leading expert on the 19th-century master, told a press conference as he presented a report that purports to authenticate it.

“This statuette was born of unknown parents, but its signature is written in every muscle,” he said.

The figurine -- which Perrault has dubbed the “femme meurtrie” or “wounded woman” -- was not displayed for security reasons.

There is no mention of the work in official records, nor in letters between Rodin and his lover -- and the state-owned Rodin Museum in Paris has voiced strong doubts about Perrault’s claim.

But after studying the statuette for a quarter-century, Perrault says he is now “intimately convinced” it is by the sculptor, who lived from 1840 to 1917, and that it was carried out around 1886.

He believes its subject is a reference to Rodin’s tortured love affair with Claudel, specifically to several abortions she is believed to have undergone during their time together.

The silver figure carries neither the signature of its creator, nor the hallmark of the foundry where it was cast and polished.

It first surfaced in the 1980s after an antiques dealer spotted it in a Paris flea market, and sold it to its current owner, a private collector, who contacted Perrault to establish its origin.

Himself a sculptor, Perrault is an official expert for France’s Cour de Cassation who has carried out more than 750 appraisals connected to Rodin’s work. He has worked as head of restoration work for the Louvre and the Chateau de Versailles.

His search sent him digging through the archives of the Rodin Museum and collections in France and abroad, comparing sketches, works and techniques by Rodin and Claudel, even rooting though their foundry receipts.

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